Evaluation Of The Admission Characteristics That Predict Students’ Final Year Academic Performance: Abuad Experience

Abstract

The mandatory requirement for admission into the first year degree programmes for all Nigeria universities and tertiary institutions are the combination of: Secondary School Certificate (SSCE) or equivalent and Universal tertiary matriculation examination (UTME). The validity of these examinations have been subjected to scrutiny because of the poor performance of many of the students at their final year examinations. Hence most universities had introduced the Post UTME examinations to further assess their prospective students. Afe Babalola is one of them. There exist varied findings on the relationship of the various entry qualifications in the universities with students’ final year performances. This work examined the academic admission scores of; SSCE, UTME, PUTME and WAITAV as predictors for the performance of the pioneer graduating students. Descriptive statistics, scatter plot, bi-variate correlation matrix and regression analysis were employed using the SPSS V 16 software. The SSCE, PUTME, WGHT and gender had positive significant correlation values of 0.183, 0.132 0.115 and 0.10 respectively with performance. The female performed better. Age and UTME had negative correlation. Since UTME is a bad predictor, yet a government compulsory requirement for admission, universities should continue to combine the UTME and PUTME but assign less weight to the UTME value in the computation WGHTAV. The managers of the UTME must re-evaluate the reliability and integrity of the examination.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n1p221